


The Capitoline Wolf

by Cerberusia



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: M/M, Magical Pregnancy, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 11:33:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18468100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/pseuds/Cerberusia
Summary: So, you're probably wondering how I managed to end up nineteen and pregnant. Believe me, I was wondering that myself.





	The Capitoline Wolf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [salazarastark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazarastark/gifts).



"Why can't the Hunters do this?" The trek from where Nico's shadow travel had dropped us to the centre of Mount Rushmore National Park hadn't been arduous, exactly, but the dense forest was making both of us uneasy. We were in the Black Hills, somewhere between Hill City and Deerfield, on the trail of something belonging to Artemis.

 _What_ belonging to Artemis, you're probably asking? We didn't know that either. Yeah, the gods usually kind of suck at specificity when sending you on quests. And Artemis has this unnerving quality that makes you not want to question her for clarification.

"Because that would tip off Apollo and that's bad because...something about sibling rivalry?" I hadn't been paying that much attention when Thalia explained it, which would probably result in my untimely but deserved death one day. My ADHD had been more interested in trying to figure out the pattern on Nico's (black, of course) t-shirt.

Nico made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. It did feel kind of like busy-work. It was also an interruption in what I felt was a well-deserved vacation from monster-slaying. Killing real monsters took time away from my zombie-killing exploits in _Resident Evil_. I'd been a lot less keen on games with zombies in them after Tartarus, actually. My current gaming drug was _Dynasty Warriors_ , on Rachel's recommendation, which was pleasantly removed from real life combat.

I was pleased to be doing it with Nico, though. We hadn't spoken since he'd declared his crush on me a few months ago, in the same breath as declaring that he was over it. Which was nice for him, and explained a lot about how Nico had acted around me for a few years. I'd kept wondering what I'd done wrong and why he seemed to hate me, in particular - well, in my defense, I'm oblivious and Nico was trying very hard to keep it under wraps.

It just made our current trip ever so slightly awkward. Because I knew and he knew that I knew because he'd told me, but we were both thinking about it but weren't actually talking about it. I mean, what was there to discuss? Nico had crushed on me, and now he didn't. He was also gay, which I hadn't guessed, but how would I when I didn't spend any time thinking about it and it had no relevance to me anyway? Except the part where Nico had been unhappily crushing on me for years and I'd been completely oblivious and the whole thing made me feel weird when I thought about it.

Nico came to a halt at a rocky outcropping, and I stopped too so I didn't plough into him. I was pretty sure his boots had steel toecaps. I'd thought he'd just paused to get his bearings again, but then I saw it too: a tear in the rock, a chink just big enough for a slim teenaged boy to get through. Or a small monster.

Just between you, me and Annabeth, I've hated caves ever since I got back from Tartarus. It's not quite claustrophobia, and it's not quite fear of the dark, either. It's a deep discomfort with dark secret places under the earth that might be harbouring things that want to tear out my liver and pan-fry it. I think it's pretty rational, even if you haven't literally been to hell and back.

Also, one of Nico's demi-god abilities is great night vision. So I didn't feel too much of a wimp when I said,

"After you."

Nico slipped through the gap in the rocks like he really was insubstantial, which meant that he was still too thin. He was no longer as terrifyingly skinny as he'd been when he'd spilled out of that jar all greenish-white and for a moment I'd thought he really was dead; and his appetite had definitely returned. It was kind of like watching a human vacuum cleaner. Still, although he was now taller than my chin, he didn't seem to be getting any wider or any more solid. But then, he was only fourteen. He had time to fill out. He didn't need me fussing about his health like - well, like my Mom did over me.

Inside, the cave looked much like any other: dark, rocky, some dirt and leaves for atmosphere. But there was a smell underlying the wet leaves and soil: a musty, musky fur smell. I gripped Riptide, still in pen form, and followed Nico through the cave towards what just looked like more blackness to me. Nico was a dim shape ahead of me, and I had the urge to grab onto his jacket so I didn't get separated. I didn't, of course. That would have been ridiculous.

There was something breathing up ahead. I didn't know if I was hearing it or just feeling it, but it was there. Nico sensed it too, and I saw him draw his Stygian iron sword in a smooth, silent motion. He had no trouble with it, which always surprised me, because I'd held it and that thing was _heavy_. There must be a lot of strength in those skinny arms.

The thing up ahead moved at the same time as I drew Riptide and my pocket flashlight. The beam of light startled it out of its attempt at pouncing. I blinked a couple of times to get my eyes to adjust, and found a chimera baring its fangs at me - both sets, both the lion head and the snake tail. It seemed oddly... _small._ It couldn't be an adult - I'd fought a full-grown chimera, and it had been a lot bigger. This one could only be just out of infancy, an adolescent. What did you call a baby chimera, anyway? A cub? A kitten? A chimera-let?

The chimera roared, but still didn't try to lunge for either of us. I kept the business end of my sword pointed at it, and looked briefly at Nico. Nico was looking at the chimera, and I guess he was thinking the same thing I was, because he didn't immediately behead it or anything.

We faced off for several tense seconds. It was a pretty alarming monster - I knew from experience that that snake head could spit venom about three feet - but it was also only as big as a medium-sized dog, and it was trying to look intimidating but it really was just a baby. I stared at it indecisively. It stared back with lambent yellow eyes. It wasn't what I'd describe as _cute_ , exactly, but there was something about it...

Eventually, Nico sighed.

"Time for an experiment," he said. He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then another. His Stygian sword drooped. I readied Riptide and prepared to save Nico from the chimera if it made a leap for him - but the chimera made a noise like a confused domestic cat as its paws dissolved into black smoke. The black crept up its legs and, as I watched, swallowed its body and snake tail. Finally it covered the head until only those malevolent feline eyes were left - and then they were gone too. The black smoke swirled and sank into the ground. Nico swayed in place for a moment, then followed suit.

"Whoa!" I caught him as he slumped to the cave floor. He didn't weigh enough. Nico stayed slumped in my arms for a moment, and I thought of him sliding out of that jar again - but then he revived and struggled out of my helping hands. He looked tired, but no paler than usual.

"Something I've been practicing," he explained, wiping his temple and smearing it with dirt. "It only works on small things so far. That was the fastest I've ever done it." He had a pleased curve to the corner of his mouth.

"Holy shit, you just dissolved it! That was _seriously_ cool." A thought occurred to me. "So where _is_ the chimera now, exactly?"

"Underworld." Nico started looking around the cave. "Not Tartarus, somewhere closer to life." He shrugged. "It'll come back quicker than if we'd just killed it and sent it to Tartarus, but..."

"But that was a good chance to practice, right?" I didn't point out that he'd had the same conflicted feelings about killing an infant monster in cold blood as I had. Nico is pretty tough, but he likes to present himself as emotionally tougher than he really is. I shouldn't even have felt weird about it, really - a baby chimera is still a chimera, and bloodthirsty enough that if it had been bigger it would have gone for us. It had still been prepared to make a good attempt.

What did it even mean for a monster to be young? I hadn't ever thought about monsters growing up before: I thought they went to the Underworld when you killed them, then found their way out, and caused havoc until they were killed again, and the cycle started again. But obviously not always.

"Check right, I'll check left," Nico instructed, recalling my wandering mind.

"When did you get so bossy?" I called over my shoulder as I went to investigate as ordered. "That's Will rubbing off on you, isn't it?

You can't hear somebody blush, and I sure couldn't have seen anything in the pitch-black cave with my flashlight pointing in the opposite direction. But there was a quality to the ensuring pause that made me pretty sure that Nico's ears were going faintly pink.

"Don't know what you mean," he said at last. "It's definitely Hazel's influence."

I laughed at that, as I was meant to. Hazel was no pushover, but she wasn't a take-charge type either. Thank the gods, really: we had enough Type As in the Seven as it was.

I also noticed that he was avoiding talking about Will. Well, he'd have to be blind not to realise that Will was interested in him as rather more than a friend. And since Nico presumably hadn't discouraged him, then I had to make the obvious assumptions about Nico's feelings.

It wasn't like we were close friends, really. I would probably have fallen over in shock if he'd suddenly turned round and confided his feelings in me. But after Nico's abrupt confession of his former crush, I felt I'd earned the right to be curious about who _was_ 'his type'. Or maybe I was just nosy. Bianca's visions of Nico all those years ago had probably given me weird ideas about how much of Nico's private life I was entitled to know about. But really, _anything_ would have been acceptable.

"Here!" I swung the flashlight round, dazzling myself in the process, and when I blinked away the spots I saw what Nico was pointing at, tucked away in the corner of the cave.

I almost wanted to say, 'Is that _it_?' It was a kid's cuddly toy, shaped like a wolf. It was kind of cute, if a little ragged around the edges, probably after being so enthusiastically loved by the baby chimera. There was something about the style that said it was older than me by a couple of decades, or maybe more. It didn't immediately hum with power like some artifacts I'd seen - on anything Zeus had touched, you could smell the ozone - but this had to be it. I bent down to pick it up.

It glowed hotly in my hand, and warmth flowed up my arm and into my body.

"Woah!" I dropped it quickly. Well, at least it was soft rather than breakable. It landed in an undignified pose on the floor. One golden eye reflected the flashlight as if it knew, and didn't approve.

"Percy?" I hadn't heard Nico move. I just about managed not to jump out of my skin.

"It's fine, it's fine," I reassured him, rubbing my arm. "It just got really warm for a second-"

"Here, let me see-" Nico's hand on my bare arm was _burning_. I nearly yelped with shock. Nico was always cold, like a small grumpy icepack, so I had no idea why his skin should feel so hot; unless he was just overheated from the fight. Then he seemed to notice that he was touching me, because he quickly yanked his hand away and cleared his throat with a tiny cough.

"It's fine," I repeated. "We just need something to wrap it up in."

"So we don't touch it directly," Nico agreed, and produced a piece of cloth from one of his numerous and capacious pockets to do the deed. It was dark green, and looked like it might once have been a bandanna. Or a cleaning rag. I hoped Artemis didn't mind her cuddly toy being delivered in it.

And that was that. We got out of the cave, and we shadow-travelled back to Camp, where the supernaturally-blessed cuddly toy could live with its numerous brethren that the Camp had collected over the decades, often for the same reason. Once we'd shown it to Artemis as proof, of course.

Artemis looked as remote and regal as she always did, but graciously and warmly thanked us, either ignoring or just not noticing Nico's uncomfortable expression. I noticed that her chosen appearance was now younger than me - by which I mean, I'd got older. The gods don't do that. They don't get older or even any wiser, really. They've been around so long that they barely change. Supposedly that's what the gods love about mortals: the swiftness and violence of a mortal life, wrapped up in our mortal concerns. But Artemis made her Hunters immune to age, though not truly immortal in the way the gods are. Did that mean she valued them less than Dionysus valued Ariadne, or Eos loved TIthonus, or Selene Endymion? Or did Zeus just not grant those kinds of metamorphoses any more? Enough of them had gone wrong...

I curbed my wandering thoughts and made all the right noises, and watched Nico slip away again. I felt unsatisfied, as if there were something we'd left unsaid; but we had plenty of time to get to be real friends, instead of just guys who'd saved each other's lives a lot.

And that, I thought, was the end of it. As you've probably already guessed, the universe had other plans.

Two months later, I noticed that I was eating a lot.

I'm an eighteen year old guy who does a lot of swinging swords about and running, so of course I eat a lot. My Mom is a candidate for sainthood for not complaining about it, honestly. But I hadn't felt this kind of constant hunger since I was about fourteen and going through a growth spurt, and eating everything in sight. It was annoying, and feeling hungry all the time was starting to make me irritable.

I didn't work that out on my own, of course. It was my Mom who sat me down and delicately asked if I was feeling OK. She was also the one who suggested that, lacking any obvious physical cause, it might be something to do with The Demigod Thing.

One of the best things about travelling by pegasus: avoiding the New York traffic. I thought longingly of soaring over Long Island on Blackjack as the car crawled through the cacophony of Manhattan horns. I'd driven the route to Camp a few times now. I kind of had to, since it wasn't like there was a bus service. And it wasn't like I could IM Blackjack. Or could I? _Could_ you IM pegasi? I'd never tried, but the more I thought about it, the less reason I could find for it to be impossible. It wouldn't be instantaneous if I IMed Blackjack for a ride: he'd have to get to my apartment from Camp, and then rest for a few minutes before setting off again. But pegasi were fast, faster than they had any right to be without magic, and it would probably still beat the time it took to drive.

It was mid-afternoon when I got to Camp, and the sun beat down on the strawberry fields. There was a breeze rolling in that made the air feel fresher and cooler than in Manhattan, and I was glad of it as I picked my way through the cabins in search of what we'd sarcastically termed the 'Nurse's Office'. It was only another cabin, but it provided storage for medical stuff and a quarantine for if somebody was really sick. And it often, even at the end of summer when nearly everybody had gone home, contained a child of Apollo getting to grips with one of their father's specialities - or just using it as a practice room.

I found Will Solace inside, reading a scroll. Will was the only Apollo kid I knew more than superficially, and he was also the one who had inherited the most of his dad's healing gift - though at the expense of musical talent. Even his whistling could probably have scared off the Stymphalian Birds. The lack of artistic ability might also have contributed to his personality, because he was by far the most laid-back of the Apollo cabin, who all had something of the _artistic temperament_. Will was cool-headed, practical, and very bossy in a nice way, which is exactly how you want a doctor to be.

"Hey," he said, rolling up the scroll and casting a critical eye over me. "Well, you don't _look_ like your arm's only half-attached..."

"Ha-ha." I'd had a slight accident during sword practice a few months ago and refused to go to the medical cabin until Will had threatened to get Clarisse to pick me up and carry me there. He was completely exaggerating, by the way. The cut hadn't been _that_ deep. The arm had been three-quarters attached at least.

So I explained about the strangely increased appetite. Had I noticed any other symptoms? No, but I dealt with enough weird shit every day to want to get it checked out, and besides, my Mom...Will nodded his head and made understanding noises before telling me to take off my shirt. Then he squinted at me. He squinted at me for such a long time that I started to get slightly worried. Then he palpated my abdomen, which made me more worried.

"Percy," he said at last, then had to clear his throat. "Percy, I promise you this is relevant: are you sexually active?" He saw me having to think about how to answer that one, and amended it: "Or, more specifically, have you been sexually active in the past three months?"

That was easy: "No." Not for lack of interest, but for lack of opportunity. I didn't want to talk about it, even with Will.

"Right, that-" He stopped again. "Have you upset a god? That you know of, I mean."

"...No?" I hadn't had that much direct interaction with the gods after Gaia's defeat, apart from spending a while in my Dad's palace, helping with the rebuilding and moping a bit. Not that that prevented one of them from being pissed off with me for something I'd done or not done. Will's face suggested he was thinking the same thing.

"Then, absent any other information, I can't provide an explanation: but I _can_ tell you that you're about eight weeks pregnant."

"...Sorry?" I hadn't caught that last bit. I was - what? I couldn't parse Will's words.

"You are about eight weeks pregnant," he enunciated, slowly and patiently. "You've been so hungry lately because your body has had to grow a womb very rapidly, not to mention the fetus itself."

Things went kind of fuzzy and distant after that. I put a hand on my abdomen as if expecting to feel something; but it felt exactly the same as it had last month and the month before.

"You're not showing yet," Will explained, correctly interpreting the gesture. "You probably won't develop a bump until twelve weeks or so, so you've got a month."

"Does this..." I waved my hand more violently than I meant to. "Does this... _happen_?"

"I've never seen it before, but there are a couple of stories in the Camp's records that I've read." Will made a vague gesture like he'd been about to shrug, but thought it might not be appropriate. "It's still extremely rare, but it's not _completely_ unknown. The last guy it happened to, I think he prayed to Hera for a child, and-"

" _Artemis._ " The goddess of childbirth whose fertility artifact I'd recovered. _Duh_ , Percy. "We went to find her fertility thingy," I explained to Will. "I touched it and it got really hot."

"And now you've got a bun in the oven. Yes, that sounds like pretty obvious cause-and-effect." Will chewed on his lip in thought. "This does potentially mean that you're carrying her child, of course. That would make it the first blood offspring of Artemis...ever. Except for any other child conceived by the same method, and there should be some record of them as Artemis' children, but I've never seen..." He trailed off, apparently lost in his own thoughts.

"That can't be it. Artemis doesn't have kids. We'd have heard about it if she did," I pointed out.

"Yes, that's the conclusion I'm coming to, though I feel a visit to the Big House coming on to check with Chiron. But if the, uh, father isn't Artemis, then who could it be?"

We pondered that for a long minute. I rewound my memory of recovering the object.

Will said,

"When you said _we_ recovered-"

At the same time as I swore very loudly in Greek.

We looked at each other. I swallowed, and said,

"Nico."

Will didn't swear, but looked like he wanted to. I felt a twinge of guilt: it was obvious even to me that Will's project of befriending Nico had a decent-sized crush behind it, and I'd kind of assumed that it was heading places, since no guy could stand up to Will's charms for long. And to be perfectly honest, Nico could do with a boyfriend. But Will's own tender feelings meant I'd accidentally put him in an awkward position. Then I remembered that I was in an even _more_ awkward position because I was _magically pregnant_ , and stopped being able to care about Will's predicament. I had more immediate problems.

"Well," Will said, then stopped. "Well, that's not the _worst_ out of the list of potential fathers, but..."

"Yeah, it could have been, like, the chimera who had it first, or something." But I could see in his face that we were both thinking about how telling Nico might play out. I wasn't afraid that he would be angry, or at least not angry at me; but if there's a lead lining to a silver cloud, Nico will find it. He was going to be upset. And why not? _I_ was upset, and I was eighteen not fourteen. Of course he wouldn't be happy, of course he wouldn't be able to sigh and get on with it. _Did_ I have to tell him? It wasn't as if I was going to demand half of Hades' wealth in alimony or something. What did he even have to do with this, beyond accidentally touching me after I'd activated the fertility artifact?

I already knew that you couldn't abort divinely-induced pregnancies when they'd come about through godly hanky-panky (exhibit A: Dionysus), and I doubted that pregnancy-by-magic-cuddly-toy worked any differently. But I also knew that even if it was possible, I wasn't going to do it. A sensible voice in my head that sounded like a combination of Annabeth and Rachel was telling me that this was completely unplanned, I didn't want to be pregnant, how was I even going to give birth, what stress was this going to put on my body, all these questions and problems - and I just knew that I was going to keep it. I just _was_. And I didn't know whether that was because of how much I loved my new baby sister or divine influence or both. But even as my mind panicked, my hindbrain had already accepted the fetus growing inside me.

I didn't say that out loud to Will. But I found myself unconsciously pressing my palm to my abdomen in a protective gesture, and Will was perceptive enough to get the hint.

I briefly summarised the quest to retrieve Artemis' cuddly toy from the adolescent chimera. It seemed stupidly obvious when I described the feeling of the toy heating up and then Nico's hand seeming to burn me, but look, I've never been the brightest crayon in the box and I'd never realised that ancient Greek woo-woo could get me _pregnant_.

"We should probably tell Chiron about this," said Will, at last. "I realise that, as an adult, you're an instructor here now rather than a camper; but when it comes to weird side-effects of divine interference, Chiron has seen it all, and may have some pertinent advice. He's not at Camp at the moment, but if I wrote a summary..."

"Sure," I agreed. "Thanks." I didn't want Will to think I was ungrateful when I was just tired from the rollercoaster of emotions I'd just gone through, and was frankly still on.

Because now there was one very important thing I had left to do.

"Look, do you mind if I bail? I need to talk to my Mom."

I spent the whole drive back thinking about what I was going to say to my Mom. All the way down the Long Island Expressway, all the way through Manhattan traffic once again. I figured that I might as well start from the beginning of the story, with the chimera, and go from there. At least Mom had met and liked Nico, who had been hilariously embarrassed by her insistence on shovelling food down him when he'd turned up scrawny and tattered on my balcony a couple of years ago. His eyes had kept sliding to me, and at the time I'd thought he was just uncomfortable because of being in a strange apartment and being fussed over; now I wondered whether his admitted crush on me had something to do with it. It wasn't like I could ask. He could look me in the eye now, but he hadn't wanted to talk about being gay or even use the word when we'd been on the quest together. And that was his prerogative. What business did I have asking him to confide in me?

Still, I'd liked the feeling that Nico was opening up to me a little. I cared for Nico. I always had as soon as Bianca had more or less entrusted him to me, not like a little brother, but maybe like a younger cousin. Which, strictly speaking, he was. It upset me to think that when he got the news, he wouldn't be able to meet my eyes again. We'd just started repairing our relationship into something like a friendship, and this would ruin it.

I was still thinking about Nico melting into the shadows like I'd always dreamed about literally sinking into the floor out of shame by the time I got back and found my Mom in the studio. I didn't go in: she deserved whatever time in there she could snatch with a newborn, and it wasn't like my condition was going anywhere. I went into the nursery, instead.

Amazingly, Estelle was asleep. I rarely saw her sleep. Maybe this was her secret: she was napping during the day so she could be especially active at night, when she was _supposed_ to be asleep. I liked to think that meant she was taking after me.

I leaned on her crib and looked around at the yellow-painted walls of the nursery. There would have to be two cribs in here, soon enough; Stella wouldn't grow out of hers quickly enough that we could recycle it.

I couldn't think about it. When I tried to think about the practicalities of having a baby, my head got hot and my vision went fuzzy. I needed to talk to Will again, see if termination really was impossible - but something in me was going _babybabybabybabybaby_ and I wasn't even going to consider it. I was going to have this damn baby, even though I wasn't actually sure _how_. Was I going to develop a new...opening? Would I have to have a C-section? Would the pregnancy be easy - would I take after Mom, who claimed to have sailed through both hers - or difficult, since my body wasn't designed to support it?

I had reflected a couple of times, when we learned about pregnancy in Health class and then again when Mom got pregnant with Estelle, how lucky I was that I would never have to go through that. If this was the gods' punishment for my hubris, I thought it was wildly disproportionate.

"Percy?" Mom was in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dishrag. She was working with clay a lot, and she hated the residue it left on her skin. "You OK?" My Mom can always tell when I need to talk to her.

 _Was_ I OK? I looked back at Estelle. She looked very small in her crib. Her tiny hand could only just close around my finger.

The talk went about as well as any talk that begins, "So, I'm pregnant," when you're a eighteen-year-old boy could have gone. Mom didn't faint or cry, not that I'd really expected her to. She's made of tough stuff, my Mom. Estelle woke up in the middle of our conversation and broke the moment with fretful demands to be fed, so Mom had to nurse her while I finished explaining the sequence of events that had led to me getting pregnant with her half-niece or -nephew. OK, that was another thing I couldn't think about because it might melt my brain.

"I have to admit, I hadn't envisioned you having a kid younger than I did," Mom admitted at last, as she handed Stella to me so she could do up her blouse again. I held her head and just watched as her weak eyes tried to focus on me. I was going to have one of _these_?

"Me neither." Estelle gurgled. "Thanks for not freaking out on me."

"You show me a situation where freaking out will help anything, then I'll freak out." Mom leaned forwards. "But _you're_ taking this very well, Percy. If I was eighteen and suddenly found out I was pregnant because of a magical stuffed toy, I don't think I would be nearly as calm."

"I guess I've just...seen enough weird shit that, OK, this is some of the weirdest shit, but after seeing people get turned into dandelions, it's on a scale of weird shit I'm familiar with." I remembered who I was talking to. "Uh, just go back and mentally edit every 'shit' to 'stuff'. Sorry." I thought about it a bit more. "Or maybe it hasn't completely sunk in and I'm only calm because I'm in denial and I'll wake up screaming in two days when it all hits me for real, I dunno."

"So long as you don't wake the baby," said Mom wryly, and we shared a weak laugh.

Stella began to make unhappy noises. I ran through the list of possible reasons - hungry, tired, dirty, cold, colicky - and struck gold with a blanket taken from her cot and wrapped around her.

"There we go," I murmured to her. She already knew my voice, even though she was only a month old. Mom had told me that you ought to talk to babies - kind of like plants - so I'd said all kinds of nonsense to her since Mom and Paul brought her home, as well as a few words I was glad she was too small to understand. I'd have to be more careful when she reached toddlerhood.

When I looked up, Mom was watching me with a smile.

"You're good with her," she said lowly, so as not to disturb Stella. "You'll make a great dad."

Quibbles about whether I was going to be a dad or a mom aside, I felt my heart swell. People say that like it's a metaphor, but I really did feel something in my chest. Mom had had two kids now: if she said it, it must be true. I _could_ do this.

Estelle was falling asleep again, her blinks getting longer and longer. I cradled her tiny animal body to my chest. I could feel Mom's eyes still on us.

"So," she said, almost under her breath, "what are we going to do about Nico?"

I thought about that as I was putting Stella back in her cot, with a pause because apparently she didn't want to go to sleep in the cot, she wanted to go to sleep on me. Mom managed to get her down peacefully.

"I mean..." I said once we'd closed the nursery door at last, "Nico doesn't really have much to do with it." Nico had accidentally contributed the other half of the genetic material for the fetus. It wasn't as if he owed me support.

"I guess not. But I bet he'd like to know about a new family member, don't you?"

Then the lock on the front door clicked as Paul's key opened it, and I went to investigate what we were having for dinner (baby-growing: still affecting my appetite) as Mom went to give Paul a kiss as he came in. We didn't say anything more about the pregnancy or Nico: Paul knew as much as he needed to know about Camp and demigods, and no more. Mom and I were going to have to induct him into some deeper mysteries before I started to show. But I didn't stay awake that night thinking about what I was going to tell Paul.

The trouble was that I had no direct way to contact Nico. I plucked up the courage to try IM-ing him, but there was no reply. I thought about Hazel, but in the end I remembered the person he'd been spending a lot of time with, and messaged Will instead. Which was a good guess, because Nico was sitting on the Apollo cabin porch with him in the morning Long Island sun when he picked up the call. I felt another pang when I noticed how close they were sitting, and reminded myself not to be so nosy.

"Do you want me to give him the basics?" asked Will once he'd shooed Nico inside to fetch cold tea. "Normally I'd just make you do it, but you didn't get yourself into this situation on purpose, and I think Nico may benefit from being primed."

I was so relieved at Will giving me this out that if he'd been there in person I could have kissed him. Well, maybe not with Nico there. And there I was, thinking about Nico's love-life again.

"Yeah," I croaked, overwhelmed with gratitude. "Yes, please."

"Don't get me wrong, this isn't the same as the two of you talking," Will warned me. "When would be a good time for that, by the way?"

You remember I said Will was bossy? Yeah, that. I could have told Will that I didn't want to talk to Nico about it after all, thanks, his further contribution was not necessary, and Will would have respected it; but I _wanted_ to talk to Nico, more than I didn't want to talk about him accidentally impregnating me. Because I knew that if I didn't talk to him about it, that would be it. Our putative friendship would be over. OK, our putative friendship might still be over once I'd opened my big mouth and the full enormity of the situation had hit him - as it still hadn't hit me - but we could manage some kind of cordial relationship. Probably.

I spent the next few hours minding Stella and running through hypothetical scenarios. Most of them didn't end well. The ones that did end well seemed unrealistic. Maybe Nico wouldn't even show up? Maybe he would have listened to Will's explanation and been so horrified that he resolved never to be within five feet of me ever again? That sounded depressingly plausible for Nico.

I was interrupted by a presence behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I grabbed Riptide and spun around as I activated it into its sword form - and found Nico skulking in the shadows he'd just melted out of. He looked at Riptide with a face that suggested it didn't impress him, and nor did I. I sheathed it, refusing to be embarrassed about my completely proportional response.

"Could you not have _knocked_?"

"I meant to appear on the balcony." Nico at least had the grace to look slightly abashed.

The conversation stalled for a moment. I realised that despite all my imagination's fevered possibilities, I had no idea how to start saying what I had to say. _Work out what you want to say, then say it._ The problem was that I didn't _want_ to say anything.

The pause extended into an awkward silence. This might have been a bad idea. I wondered if Dad would drop a kraken in the street outside if I asked really nicely, just to save me from suffocating under the weight of what we weren't saying.

At last, Nico nervously wet his lips. He looked desperately uncomfortable.

"So, what are you going to do?" he asked.

"Keep eating Mom out of house and home, read a lot of pregnancy books, and in about seven months time, give birth, I guess. Somehow." I still didn't know how that was going to work. I was hoping for a C-section.

"Mm." Nico chewed his lip. "So, what do you want from me?" He'd gone back to not being able to look me in the eye.

"It's more like what you want to give. I mean, Mom raised me by herself, and she couldn't even ask her parents for help, so if it's just me, that's fine. It was a total accident, Nico. You don't have to be involved."

Nico snorted. "I think I'm pretty obviously involved."

"Nico, we both touched a magical cuddly toy that got me pregnant. It was a completely unforseeable accident. It's not like we had _sex_." Half a second after the words left my mouth, my common sense caught up with it and I could have happily summoned that kraken to land directly on the apartment.

"They'll think we have." Nico's voice was tight. "That's how it normally works, so everybody will think we - we had sex." He'd almost said _fucked_ , but shied away at the last moment.

"Our friends won't. Do you really care what other people think?" I remembered that Nico did, secretly, really care about what other people thought of him. "And so what if they assume I got pregnant because we had sex? It's not like I'd be embarrassed if somebody thought we'd done it. It's not like you're Clarisse." This was not entirely true and also not entirely fair to Clarisse, but I was terrified that Nico was going to cry and then shadow-travel away forever. Shouldn't I be having the mood-swings, since I was pregnant? But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, Nico's growing up into not a bad-looking guy. I could live with people thinking that I'd hit that.

Nico did not look like he could live with that. I was slightly insulted. Was the prospect of relative strangers assuming we'd once got it on really _that_ horrifying? His crush on me must have fizzled out big time. On the other hand, he _was_ only fourteen; and I, with my far-superior wisdom of eighteen years, could well remember that at that age that kind of thing would have seemed a massive deal.

" _I'd_ be embarrassed," Nico snapped. To prove his point, the tips of his ears had gone pink.

"Then I guess we don't tell them." I leaned back on my elbows and shrugged. "Immaculate conception, whatever."

Nico still didn't look happy. Actually, he was making a face that was remarkably like Estelle's when she was considering whether or not to have a screaming fit. He was probably thinking along the same lines as I was: that was fine, until the baby came out (of where? I asked myself again) looking like both of us. And we might have been cousins on the godly side, but beyond dark hair we didn't look alike enough for me to claim coincidence. As a newborn, Estelle had resembled Paul to a truly freakish degree.

"Until somebody notices the family resemblance," said Nico, summing up my own thoughts. Now that was a thought: how much would this baby look like Nico? I was hoping for his hair. I know I've said it before, but it really was _very_ silky.

Nico turned away from me, raking his hand through his hair. For a moment he looked a lot like Bianca had with her hair pulled back, all high cheekbones and aquiline nose. A noble-looking face, marred by an expression I could only describe as _anguished_.

"I'm sorry," he said at last.

"Don't be," I said, alarmed by the way his jaw was trembling. "I don't blame you for anything, it's not your fault. We didn't know."

"But it _is_ my fault." Nico's face crumpled. "I _did_ this to you!"

"Woah, woah -" Nico's hands were balled into fists and the shaking had extended to his whole body. I thought I saw a shadow licking at his heavy boots, so I did the only thing I could think of: I grabbed him and pulled him down to sit next to me on the bed.

It's kind of sad, but the moment I got really worried was when Nico didn't automatically pull away from me. He'd shaken his overlong hair into his eyes, but I could see a couple of tears trickling down his cheeks. He was completely silent.

I had never, ever seen Nico cry before. Not even when I'd told him about Bianca's death and he'd been so upset that I'd failed to protect her. Not even when he'd seen Melinoe in the form of his mother and called her _Mama_. Not even when he'd been taken captive in that jar. Helpless, I put my arm around him. His heaving shoulders felt thin underneath the thick aviator jacket. Thin and fragile, even though he was at least as tough as me and he'd shown it plenty of times.

"Come on," I said into his ear, "if the idea of people thinking we did it is so repulsive to you, and least you can take comfort from knowing that that means she takes after the better-looking parent."

 _That_ made Nico laugh a watery laugh, and though he didn't look up, he did take a few shuddery breaths.

"I always liked your stupid sense of humour," he said at last in a wobbly voice. The laughter seemed to have shocked him out of crying.

"Yeah, but that just makes me worry that you getting over me makes you find me a lot less funny." I gave his shoulders a squeeze. Nico sniffed a bit and said, very quietly,

"I-I don't think I have, to be honest. Gotten over you." He sniffed again. "I was doing really well, but now-"

My own recently-broken heart ached in sympathy. Nico's hair was falling in his eyes - he needed a haircut - and I wanted to do something like brush it out of his face. He was small under my arm and felt much frailer than I knew he was. But he looked in need of comfort so it was OK to treat him like this, wasn't it? I could feel my heartbeat in my chest.

Nico looked up at me through his hair and his eyes were pink-rimmed and his thin mouth was full and red. He was looking at me like - and he couldn't even have known he was doing it - he wanted to be kissed. I knew that look: the parted lips, the beseeching eyes.

So I kissed him. I leaned in and caught his mouth with mine, just delicately, then more firmly. He made a small startled squeak, but didn't pull away. He trembled just a little as he began to move his mouth inexpertly in response. I was still holding his shoulders and I twisted so it was more like the way you'd hold your girlfriend than the way you'd comfort a bro. Nico liked that, and he liked it when I licked at the seam of his lips: I felt the shudder run right through him. We could do it, I realised. I could push him down on my bed and make out with him, and he'd let me. In fact, I bet he would let me do more than just kiss him and feel him up. My mind swirled with possibilities.

Reluctantly, I let go. Nico kept his eyes closed for a long moment before his long dark lashes fluttered open and he peered up at me with a mixture of delight and mistrust. It was a face Nico made when he was happy about something, but was waiting for there to be a catch. He'd ended up pretty much in my lap, and I didn't want to move him. I tried to think of something to say, but for once in my life, I was lost for words.

"I guess it would be wrong for me to have a kid before having my first kiss," Nico admitted at last. He still looked wary, and his face was marked pink with tear-stains. It made his eyes look very big and very dark. Maybe there had been something else to my sudden interest in Nico's love-life, because I wanted to kiss him again.

It was a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Nico had had a giant hero-worshipping crush on me for nearly five years, still wasn't comfortable with his sexuality, and had spent way more time than was healthy with dead people. I was four years older than him, had only recently admitted to myself that there had been a lot more to my own admiration of Luke Castellan than heterosexual hero-worship, and was probably whacked out of my mind on the same magically-induced pregnancy hormones that were making me love this bizarre and unexpected fetus growing inside me. What was I even offering, here? What did Nico think I was offering?

Reader, I kissed him again.


End file.
